Understanding Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence

This chapter lists prerequisites and discusses:

• Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence architecture.

• Oracle BI Administration Tool.

• Oracle BI Presentation Services.

• Roles.

• Navigation.

• Reporting tools.

• Request filters.

• Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence setup.

• Cache management.

Prerequisites

The following software is required to use the Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence for PeopleSoft application with the EPM database. You must complete the installation of this software before you implement the Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application:

• PeopleSoft Campus Solutions Warehouse 9.1.

  Note. (Optional) License the PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management, Financial Management Solutions, Human Capital Management, and Supply Chain Management warehouses.

• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, release 10.1.3.4.1.

  Note. Select the Oracle Application Server option.

• Oracle Application Server.

• Oracle Application Server infrastructure components:

  • Oracle Internet Directory (LDAP Server).

  • Oracle Single Signon Server.

See PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management Installation Guide.

See Oracle Business Intelligence Infrastructure Installation and Configuration Guide

See Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management Fundamentals 9.1 Preface.

Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence Application Setup

The high level steps that you will complete to set up the Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application are:

1. Configure OBIEE environment for the Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application.

2. Run the delivered update SQL scripts in EPM to enable the drill in place functionality to PeopleSoft applications.

3. Set up EPM data-level security.

4. Configure desired new dimensional hierarchies in OBIEE as needed.

5. Configure single signon between the online transaction processing application, EPM, and OBIEE.

6. Review the delivered OBIEE dashboard data-level security and enable additional dashboard data-level security in OBIEE as needed.

Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence Architecture

This diagram depicts the relationship between PeopleSoft source systems, the EPM warehouses, Oracle BI components (such as Oracle Answers, Oracle Delivers, and the Administrator Tool), and interactive dashboards provided with the Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application:

Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence architecture

Oracle BI Administration Tool

This section discusses the:

• Repository file

• Physical layer

• Business Model and Mapping layer

• Presentation layer

Repository File

Prebuilt metadata content is maintained in the metadata repository file named EPM91_Master.rpd. The repository contains the Physical, Business Model and Mapping, and Presentation layers that are discussed in the following sections. The Oracle BI Administration Tool is the user interface into the layers in the repository, as shown in this example:

Consistency Check

The Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide discusses consistency checks that you must perform on repository metadata before you make the repository available for queries.

Physical Layer

A Physical table is an object in the Physical layer of the Oracle BI Administration Tool that corresponds to an object in a Physical database. The Physical layer folder stores the shortcuts (references) to physical tables. Physical tables are typically imported from a database or another data source, and they provide the metadata necessary for the Oracle BI Server to access the tables. The Physical layer represents the physical structure of the data sources to which the Oracle BI Server submits queries.

A physical object in OBIEE can also be based on an SQL query.

Connection Pools

In Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application, the EPM warehouses provide the data source for the Physical layer. A Physical layer can have multiple data sources. Each data source must have at least one corresponding connection pool, which contains data source information that the system uses to connect to a data source, the number of connections allowed, timeout information, and other connectivity-related administrative details. Connection pools allow multiple concurrent data source requests (queries) to share a single database connection, reducing the overhead of connecting to a database.

The Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application delivers two connection pools—MDW (multidimensional warehouse) Connection Pool and MDW Init Block Connection Pool. For performance reasons, the system uses the MDW InitBlock connection pool exclusively for initialization blocks. The dedicated connection pool contains these default properties:

See Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide, "Creating and Administering the Physical Layer in an Oracle BI Repository," Setting Up Connection Pools.

Initialization Blocks

The system uses initialization blocks to initialize dynamic repository variables, system session variables, and nonsystem session variables. This table lists the initialization blocks that are delivered with the Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application:

SELECT A.URI || B.URL
 FROM
PS_SRC_CONFIG A, 
PS_SRC_COMPONENT B
WHERE A.SRC_SYS_ID =
 B.SRC_SYS_ID
AND A.SRC_SYS_ID = 'HCM'
AND B.COMPONENT_ID=
'ADM_APPL_PROG_MNT'

SELECT A.URI || B.URL
FROM PS_SRC_CONFIG A, 
PS_SRC_COMPONENT B
WHERE A.SRC_SYS_ID =
 B.SRC_SYS_ID
AND A.SRC_SYS_ID = 'HCM'
AND B.COMPONENT_ID=
'JOB_SUMMARY'

SELECT A.URI || B.URL
FROM PS_SRC_CONFIG A,
 PS_SRC_COMPONENT B
WHERE A.SRC_SYS_ID =
 B.SRC_SYS_ID
AND A.SRC_SYS_ID = 'FSCM'
AND B.COMPONENT_ID=
'JOURNAL_ENTRY'

SELECT A.URI||B.URL
FROM PS_SRC_CONFIG A,
PS_SRC_COMPONENT B 
WHERE A.SRC_SYS_ID=
B.SRC_SYS_ID
AND A.SRC_SYS_ID='FSCM'
AND B.COMPONENT_ID=
'VNDR_PAYINQ_OVRDUE'

Global Dimensions

Global dimensions are used by more than one mart within a functional warehouse, and across functional warehouses, to provide you with a consistent view of the data. The Physical layer stores global dimension tables in the Global Dimensions folder. Examples of global dimensions are calendar, time, and business unit.

System Table

The fact table named ZZZ is a logical table that is used for system purposes.

Business Model and Mapping Layer

The Business Model and Mapping layer represents the logical structure of the information in the repository. The physical schemas are simplified and reorganized based on the users' view of the data. The business models contain logical columns arranged in logical tables (logical dimension tables and logical fact tables), logical joins, and dimensional hierarchy definitions. This layer also contains the mappings from the logical columns to the source data in the Physical layer.

The Business Model and Mapping layer appears in the middle pane of the Oracle BI Administration Tool.

Generally, each logical display folder in this layer represents a business area. Each folder has a shortcut (reference) to all of the logical dimension and fact tables that are joined together in a star schema. For example, CSW – Admissions and Recruiting – Admission Application is the name of a logical display folder. It contains the logical fact table named Fact Admission Application, and related logical dimension tables. The logical display folder should contain all of the dimensions and facts that are required for the given star schema.

The following graphic represents the star schema for the CSW – Admissions and Recruiting – Admission Application logical folder:

Dimensional Hierarchies

Some of the results that appear in the Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application represent hierarchical data structures. A hierarchy is a set of parent-child relationships between certain attributes within a dimension. The hierarchy attributes, called levels, roll up from child to parent. For example, months can roll up to years. Therefore, if an aggregate table exists at the month level, that table can be used to answer questions at the year level by summing all of the month-level data for a year.

The dimensional hierarchies in the Business Model and Mapping layer are either inherited from the dimensional hierarchies that exist in PeopleSoft source system data structures, or created specifically to support the delivered dashboard functionality. The Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application delivers metadata with these prebuilt hierarchies:

Degenerate Dimensions

A fact table may contain columns that cannot be aggregated, such as application number, application program number, and student career number that act as dimension attributes. In the Business Model and Mapping layer, these columns reside in a separate logical dimension folder named Dimension <Fact table name >. The logical fact folder (named Fact <Fact table name >) and the logical dimension folder (named Dimension <Fact table name >) both use the same physical source table.

For example, the F_ADM_APPL fact table in the Physical layer contains these columns that cannot be aggregated

• Application Number

• Application Program Number

• Student Career Number

In this example, the F_ADM_APPL fact table is represented by two logical tables in the Business Model and Mapping layer: the Fact Admission Application table and the Dimension Admission Application table. Dimension Admission Application is the degenerate dimension. The Dimension Admission Application table contains the degenerate dimensions from the F_ADM_APPL fact table.

The Presentation table that hosts the degenerate attributes is called Document Details.

Presentation Layer

The Presentation layer simplifies the business model and makes it easy for users to understand and query. It exposes only the data that is meaningful to the users, and organizes the data in a way that aligns with the way that users think about the data. The Presentation layer represents subject areas. This layer provides a way to present a customized view of a business model, known as Presentation catalog, to different sets of users. The Presentation layer appears in the left pane of the Oracle BI Administration Tool and contains a group of subject areas that represent information about your institution or groups of users within your institution.

The subject area appears in the workspace when you click the Answers link from any location in the OBIEE application. Subject area names correspond to the types of information that they contain. For example, the metadata for the CSW subject area maps to data in the Campus Solutions Warehouse.

Campus Solutions

The delivered OBIEE metadata provides insight into information in these Campus Solutions Warehouse data marts and subject areas:

See PeopleSoft Campus Solutions Warehouse Preface.

See Working with Delivered OBIEE Dashboards for the Campus Solutions Warehouse.

Financial Management Solutions

The delivered OBIEE metadata provides insight into information in these FMS Warehouse data marts and subject areas:

See PeopleSoft Financial Management Solutions Warehouse Preface.

See Working with Delivered OBIEE Dashboards for the Financial Management Solutions (FMS) Warehouse.

Human Capital Management

The delivered OBIEE metadata provides insight into information in these HCM Warehouse data marts and subject areas:

See PeopleSoft Human Capital Management Warehouse Preface.

See Working with Delivered OBIEE Dashboards for the Human Capital Management (HCM) Warehouse.

Supply Chain Management

The delivered OBIEE metadata provides insight into information in these SCM Warehouse data marts and subject areas:

See PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management Warehouse Preface.

See Working with Delivered OBIEE Dashboards for the Supply Chain Management (SCM) Warehouse, Working with Delivered OBIEE Dashboards for the Supply Chain Management (SCM) Warehouse.

Oracle BI Presentation Services

This section discusses:

• Oracle BI Answers

• Oracle BI Dashboards

• Web Catalog Folder

See Oracle Business Intelligence Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboards User Guide.

Oracle BI Answers

Oracle BI Answers is a user interface that is part of the Oracle BI Presentation Services component of Oracle BI Intelligence.

Oracle BI Answers is the embedded reporting tool that allows users with the appropriate permissions to build and modify reports that let end users explore and interact with information, and drill in place to source data. The Fusion Campus Solutions Intelligence application contain prebuilt reports that are generated from metadata in the repository, which is mapped to metadata in EPM warehouses. You can access these reports either from the delivered dashboards, or from the Oracle Answers Catalog pane on the Oracle Answers page.

On the Oracle Answers page, you can also access the subject area folders that coincide with Oracle BI Presentation Catalog folders. The fact and dimension folders and columns appear in a subject area folder, just as they do in the Presentation Catalog.

See Also

Oracle Business Intelligence Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboards User Guide, "Basics of Working with Requests in Oracle BI Answers"

Oracle BI Dashboards

The Oracle BI Dashboards user interface is part of the Oracle BI Presentation Services component of Oracle BI Intelligence.

Interactive Dashboards provide points of access for analytics information. A dashboard is made up of sections of information that can contain items such as results from Oracle BI Answers, external Web content, HTML text, graphics, and links to other dashboards. Dashboard content is logically organized into pages. The pages appear as tabs across the top of the screen in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards.

A dashboard page is designed to meet the needs of a particular role. For example, the Admissions and Recruiting Analysis dashboard page is designed for campus recruiters who want to analyze recruiting effectiveness and admission trends.

To access a dashboard, your PeopleSoft user ID must be assigned to the appropriate Presentation Catalog group in Oracle BI Intelligence. Your PeopleSoft application security settings determine the data that you can see on each dashboard. For example, managers can view performance activity only for the business units and departments for which they are responsible.

Every dashboard or report can have a set of prompts that determine the data that appears. When you change the value of a prompt on a dashboard, and click the Go button, the system automatically refreshes the data on the dashboard. Changing a prompt can affect the amount of data, the column headings, the KPI values, and the graph formats.

See Setting Up Security.

See Also

Oracle Business Intelligence Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboards User Guide, "Using Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards"

Web Catalog Folder

The Oracle BI Web Catalog stores the application dashboards and report definitions, and contains information regarding permissions and accessibility of the dashboards by groups. Prebuilt web catalog content is maintained in the folder named EPMMaster.

Roles

A user's role in the organization controls the user's access to objects (such as dashboards, reports, and catalog folders) in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. Presentation Catalog groups are defined by the system or by an administrator. You assign specific users to Presentation Catalog groups, and that group membership determines the users' access to Presentation Catalog object. Users in the Administrator Presentation Catalog group have full access to perform any action in a specific subject area folder.

This table lists the delivered Presentation Catalog groups, and the subject areas to which the users in those groups have full access to perform any action:

All of the Presentation Catalog groups that are listed in this table, with the exception of the Presentation Server Administrators group, have a corresponding Oracle BI Server group with the exact name.

See Also

Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide, "Managing Oracle BI Presentation Services Security"

Drilling to the PeopleSoft Source Transaction System

Users with the appropriate permissions can log into the OBIEE application and click links to view Dashboards, Answers, More Products, Settings, and My Account. The views that you can access are determined by your membership in a Presentation Catalog group.

See Oracle Business Intelligence Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboards User Guide, "Using Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards," Navigating in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards.

For certain packaged OBIEE reports, you can drill in place from summary reports to more detailed reports, and from there to source transactions in the transaction processing application. This table lists the delivered reports from which you can drill into the PeopleSoft transaction processing application, and the target online transaction page:

Request Filters

During the creation of an Oracle BI request, you can use column filters to constrain the request to obtain results that answer a particular question. Together with the columns that you include on the answer, a column filter determines what the results will contain. A column filter consists of a column to filter, a value to use when applying the filter, and an operator that determines how the value is applied. You can also prevent the filter from being replaced during navigation and prompting.

An example of an Oracle BI request that is built using a filter is the Applicant Trends report that is embedded in the CSW: Student Administration dashboard: Overview page. The request is filtered by Academic Year using a page prompt for that report. You can further narrow the results that appear on the Applicant Trends report by using the Institution, Campus, Admit Term, Academic Level, Academic Career, Academic Program and Academic Plan dashboard prompts that appear on the Overview page.

See Oracle Business Intelligence Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboards User Guide, "Filtering Requests in Oracle BI Answers" for additional information on using column filters in an Oracle BI request.

Cache Management

For this release of the OBIEE, if you run an initial or incremental load without first clearing the query cache, it is possible that reports that you run after the load process will reuse the cache that existed prior to the load process. This can result in inconsistencies between reports. There are several alternatives to mitigate this situation, such as:

• Configure the query cache to expire daily.

• Clear the cache tables manually as needed; for example, after you complete a load process.

• Schedule the system to clear the cache tables at same frequency as the incremental load process.

To clear cached queries:

1. Open the Oracle BI Administration Tool in online mode.

2. Access the Cache Manager page (Manage, Cache) and select all cache entries.

3. Click Action, Refresh.

To disable the cache:

1. Locate this configuration file: <root directory>\OracleBI\server\Config\NQSConfig.INI.

2. In the Query Result Cache Section, change the [ CACHE ] setting from ENABLE = YES; to ENABLE = NO;.

3. Save the NQSConfig.INI configuration file and restart the Oracle BI Server service.

See Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide, "Query Caching in the OracleBI Server" chapter for more information on query caching in OBIEE.